EESL to procure 50 lakh smart meters for smart—grid projects

State-run EESL on Friday has said that it has floated a tender for procurement of 50 lakh smart meters in July, which will be used for implementation of smart grid projects in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

According to a Power minsitry statement it will help in reducing AT&C (aggregate technical and commercial) losses, power theft and also help in monitoring of round the clock power supply eventually leading to greater efficiency and 24X7 power for all.

According to the statement, pre-bid meeting was held by the EESL on August 22 for procurement of 50 lakh smart meters which elicited stellar response from manufacturers, system integrators and has also excited various other stakeholders, including World Bank and telecom operators etc.

The interest shown by the smart meter fraternity is also evident from the participation of about 100 companies in the pre-bid meeting.

The EESL will be making the entire upfront investment as well as maintain the entire infrastructure for the next ten years. This approach has made the project feasible as most of the state utilities are not in a position for such rollouts due to their financial constraints.

The Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) will recover its investment from the savings accruing to the DISCOMs in subsequent years.

The meters are being procured for implementation of smart grid projects in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh and will help these states in not only significantly reducing their AT&C losses way of increased billing efficiency, but will completely change the way in which electrical energy is presently being consumed and paid for by the consumers.

Installation of these smart meters along with its associated communication and IT infrastructure will enable the DISCOMs to obtain real time energy consumption data of each consumer for subsequent analysis.

Smart meters will also pave the way for initiating various smart measures by DISCOMs like time of day (TOD)/time of use (TOU) billing, prediction and management of peak demand, providing real time energy consumption data to consumer, prepaid billing facility, remote connection and disconnection of load, accurate billing, etc.

Installation of these meters will also obviate the need for the meter reader’s visit to each and every consumer.

In order to make the entire project feasible and affordable, EESL has unbundled the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) project into two parts, procurement of smart meter and arranging the system integrator.